Teams365 Blog

Daily tips, tools and blog posts for leaders and their teams. Daily posts since January 2014. The Teams365 blog is brought to you by Jennifer Britton, founder of Potentials Realized, and author of Effective Group Coaching and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.

"This is the first of our new #FlashbackFriday series where I am revisiting some of our past posts from the last three years. With more than a thousand posts under our belt, there's lots to choose from.

Today's post includes some of the questions I posed to you last year at this time as you got to thinking about your new year's resolutions and how to be more successful with them.

"What are your new year's resolutions? Some common ones I've heard from team leaders in recent years have included:

* Spending more one-on-one time with team members* Making meetings more efficient* Getting a handle on email management and/or other office organizing issues* Creating more defined boundaries with time on and time off of work* Creating more defined boundaries around technology*Becoming more efficient with time* Getting more exercise (especially at lunch time to create a break and thinking time!)

They note that 45% of American adults create new years resolutions with 8% being successful. That's a pretty low percentage. I've recently had dialogue with a number of team leaders I coach and support around thinkgs they may want to do to raise that amount and be more successful.

Here are four things you might want to consider in making your resolutions stick into 2016:

1. Be clear in articulating them. The StatisticsBrain.com article notes that those who are explicit in making new years resolutions are 10x more successful in achieving their goal.

2. Write them down and make them visible. Many of us, myself included, set resolutions but don't make them visible. Post its, or a reminder on your phone can help toWhat will help keep your goals visible?

3. Share them and create some accountability partners around them - Share your goals with others and create some accountability partners who can cheer you on, or hold your feet to the fire (whatever is needed by you in that moment!). We know from lots of studies how important having an accountability partner really isWho do you want to share your resolutions with? Who can be a support or accountability partner to you?

4. Be selective in the number of resolutions you choose. It's very easy to create a long laundry list of things you want to do AND the more we add to the list, the harder it may be to remember, or the more diffuse our efforts become. You may have one or two major goals in different areas of your life, OR a small handful across areas (such as finances, relationships, career/business, family, health etc)Ultimately, what are the resolutions you want to focus on?

What's it going to take for you to be successful in moving the most important goal of yours forward for the new year?

With best wishes,Jennifer

Jennifer BrittonPotentials Realized | Coaching Team LeadersContact us to learn more about our coaching, training and consulting servicesFollow us on Twitter @Teams365Phone: (416)996-8326

Today's Team building tip gets you and your team thinking about activities in the new year that you might want to replicate. Consider these questions:

What worked well this year?

What were some of the lessons learned that could be applied to other projects and programs?

What projects would you like to replicate in different ways?

What can you automate?What tasks could be delegated?

As we go to wrap up this final team building tip of the year, which questions have sparked the most discussion for you and your team?

We've covered a lot of ground this year in our 52 team building tips. From discussing strengths, to priorities, to what you want to leverage, I hope that you will continue to bring these questions into your team meeetings and other discussions. A reminder that you can pck up a copoy of the Teams365 Team Leader Deck which includes our first 52 questions. Check them out here.

With the first part of the holidays behind us it's time for many of us to start looking at our 2017 plans.

As we look towards the end of the year and the start of the new year, consider these questions :

What are your top 5 goals for the new year – individually? Collectively? Organizationally?

What successes from 2016 can you build on?

What is going to help you create momentum in the new year?

What activities are core to the success of your team in 2017?

What do you want the theme of the year to be?

What systems will be important for you to put in place or refine?

What will help accelerate results?

What will be key relationships to foster or focus on in 2017?

What pauses do you want to build in for reflection and capturing lessons learned. Schedule these in your calendar now! `

When you look back on December 31, 2017 what do you hope the year will have brought to you?

I shared most of these questions last year at this time and it was wonderful to receive a number of emails from readers saying how useful they were with their planning process.

If you haven't done so, you can listen into a ten minute audio I've posted on vision which is part of the Inner Biz Leader Virtual Business Planning Retreat. You can access it here - scroll down until you see the preview for the Vision Audio. Enjoy!

Today's post gets you to start turning your attention to some stock taking of this past year. We've got a little less than a week left in the year, and between the parties, and presents, and eating, and resting, it can be a great time to take stock of the year. Here at the Teams365 blog this year we've focused on a range of topic areas including Virtual Faciltiation, ﻿Global Leadership﻿, New Leadership tips, Exercises to undertake with your team. I also did a couple of series including the Foundations of Feedback, the Foundations of Teamwork, and the ﻿Foundations of Goals﻿.I'm sure you've pick up our bias here at Potentials Realized that success in today's business context is so dependent on Results, Relationships as well as Learning.

I hope that you will grab 15 minutes today or this week to relfecton these 10 questions to help you take stock of the past year. I'll be following up in a few days with ten more questions to support you in creating your vision for the new year.

Here are ten questions to support you in taking a look back at the last year:1. What's been your biggest success this year?2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?3 What habits have most supported you this year?4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year? 7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?10. What and how will you celebrate the succcesses of 2016? With whom?

At Potentials Realized, one of our main focus areas is working with teams We work wtih teams of all kinds - project teams, intact teams, virtual teams as well as groups that are being called a team but are really a group.

Teams usually don't naturally excel - like most living things they benefit from some care and attention. Teams also benefit from structured time focused on helping them get to know each other, their roles, styles and strenghts.

This year we've had a variety of posts focusing on team development as well as virtual facilitation.

Here are links to 10 of my favorite posts on things you can do with your team - from questions to actual activities:

Teams365 #554: Team Building - Project Close Out - Click here to read five key areas you will want to explore in undertake an end of project close out.

Teams365 #1064: Team Development Activity A - Z - B is for boundaries. Click here to review a quick activity to support the team in idenfiying what they want to, and need to focus on, and boundaries they want to create in their work. Click here to read more.

​What have been your favorite activities featured here? What other sources do you go to for ideas around team development?

This year marks the end of the third year of daily posts here at the Teams365 blog. It's been quite the journey and experiment of moving to a daily blog format for more than a thousand days! What began as a way to expand readership and visibility of our website with a handful of readers, has grown into thousands of readers throughout the week, the seeds of a couple of new books and more importantly impact and learning for leaders around the world.

Plans are underway for our 2017 blog posts, with a continued daily focus, and some new weekly columns. Our Team Building Tips Thursday will now be joined on Friday by a Flashback Friday section where I'll take a look at past posts from the blog. Let me know by email what you have enjoyed and what other focus areas you would like explored during 2017.

​Here are some of our top posts and post areas for 2016. Let's take a look:

Teams365 #1075 - Linked IN article - 10 Year End Activities to Undertake With Your Team - Click to read here

​Our Teams365 Team Development Activities Series which will continue into 2017. If you haven't checked out these short posts which usually include a 3-5 minute video, take a look.

​This led to the development of a new e-book which builds on these posts and goes into 26 essential characteristics of Highly Effective Vritual and Remote TEam Leaders. Pick up a copy at our store for $19 US.

This year I introduced a new cartoon series of Jo, the new team leader. This series focused on some of Jo's key activities such as hosting virtual meetings, and undertaking one-on-ones with staff. View the cartoons here.

Yesterday we explored a quick team development activity around looking at strengths and styles When team members understand these it makes it much easier to consider what can be leveraged for maximum impact. We may realize for example that our team is great at building relationships with stakeholders. Perhaps that becomes a lead role for thet eam over time. Or maybe we are really good at getting results. Our capability might be leveraged for high visibility, urgent projects.Asking ourselves the question of "What could be leveraged?" regularly, helps to capitalize on what we are great at.

Learn more about the Everything DiSC and how ti can support your team in knowing their lever points.

Author

Jennifer Britton - Known for her writing and work in the areas of teamwork, leadership, team and group coaching, Jenn is the founder of Potentials Realized, and a former team leader with global organizations including the UN. She is passionate about helping teams and organizations to do their best work. Potentials Realized is a performance improvement company providing training, coaching and facilitation services.

Upcoming Programs

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Tips and Tools for Your Group and Team Programs - More than 2 dozen tips to support you in your work with workshops, webinars, teleclasses, retreats etc. More than 3.5 hours of lecture videos, worksheets and 28 accompanying activities.